


An Interview With Uupse Fyr

by Varanu



Series: The Sexth House [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Child Abuse, Clone Sex, F/F, F/M, Incest, Metaphysics, Multi, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:06:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9664829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varanu/pseuds/Varanu
Summary: Divayth Fyr's youngest daughter-wife adores him, with all her body and blood. He created her, he raised her. How should it be otherwise?





	

Well, are you writing? I hope you are writing. I am not going to repeat myself. I don’t know why he wants me to do this, I suppose it amuses him. You had better be writing.  


My name is Uupse Fyr. I was born, if born is the word, approximately a century after my surviving sisters. Our progenitor, Divayth Fyr, made me of his flesh, as he made each of them. We are his daughters, in a sense. In another sense we are his… selves, I suppose. I’m sorry if the language I use is a little clumsy. To my knowledge the thing has not been done before or since. 

He is the one who calls us his daughters, by the way. Yes, it is awkward to be called ‘daughter’ in bed. Not that I have ever known anything else, I suppose. He is a little jealous. But he asks us to call him  _ Divayth, _ or among company  _ Lord Fyr, _ and that helps somewhat. 

We are the ones who call ourselves his wives—he never does. Beyte says it is not really like being a wife, more like a consort or lover, but I disagree, and so does Alfe. We live with him and love him and although we do not bear him children we are closer than any mere lover could be. We are facets of his soul, of his  _ self, _ distorted and reflected back to him. At least that is how I think of it. 

Alfe says if we were merely lovers we would not be expected to work as we do, but Alfe has an acid tongue. I have heard her and Divayth shouting at one another, though only once did it ever go beyond shouting. All I know of that is that I heard a crash of shattering glass, and then silence, and both of them were wary of one another for weeks. I don’t blame them. They are too much like one another, even more so than the rest of us; too close, and yet not close enough. 

What? No, leave it, it doesn’t signify. If you want Alfe’s story you will need to talk to Alfe, and I wish you luck with  _ that. _ I’m off track. Where was I? Thank you. 

All I know about my sisters’ creations, I learned by reading Divayth’s old notebooks detailing the experiments. That was how I learned to read, actually. They’re mostly made of pressed corkbulb paper, but he puts preservation spells on all his books so they can hold up to small children. So I learned very early that he made my sister Alfe first of all of us, and Beyte second. I have already described Alfe for you, and you won’t be surprised to hear that he made sure Beyte came out with a sweeter temper. They are nearly opposites of one another. After Beyte he made another pair of opposites, Gamme and Delte, specifically to help him with his work. Delte came out efficient, orderly, and unimaginative; she handles most of the accounting and records-keeping at Tel Fyr. Gamme was… Gamme was the opposite. 

He never speaks of Gamme, though his notes are uncompromisingly thorough. He had tried to distill his sense of curiosity into her, and succeeded too well; she could not keep her mind on a single topic long enough to even finish a sentence. He still has journals filled with her ragged script, and although her flight from thought to thought is amazingly rapid, her journal entries over time show that she was increasingly miserable. He tried to modify her, through behavioral technique and through alchemy. None of it was particularly successful, and finally one of the treatments poisoned her. Alfe thinks it was intentional, that he was tired and heart-sick of trying. I cannot imagine it, but I suppose she would know better than I. 

For a time he made no more daughters, but then his notes begin to allude to some discussion with the Last Living Dwarf, the Dwemer Yagrum Bagarn, on the nature of the universe, of souls and descent and ascent and—oh, names and aspects and gradients, that sort of thing. I don’t expect you to understand. 

In summary he wanted to try again to make a daughter like Gamme, someone curious and inquisitive enough to take an interest in his research. The Corprusarium takes a deal of work, you know, and it’s not always very pleasant work either. Alfe is intelligent enough but does not really care about research, and nor does Delte. And Beyte… no, if you knew Beyte you would not even ask. 

So he began again, with some modifications to his process. The next several decades of notes are a testament to his persistence. The new process was much trickier and more delicate than the original, and intended to give him more control over the temperament of his daughter-copies. But it also failed much more often. No, I don’t think he minds admitting that. Any brilliant sorcerer has his share of failures; he says that a sorcerer who never fails is not grasping high enough. 

Epse, Zeyte, Eyte, and Teyte were the first batch he created. They never lived at all; the modified tissue samples he took from himself simply died in their nutrient baths. Yehte, Kaape, Laamde, and Miu survived for several weeks, but grew only into blind masses of corprus-ridden flesh, rotting and healing and rotting again. Niu, Xeye, Auume, and Peye developed eyes and fingers and organs, but again were corprus-ridden, and he evidently spent some time afterward scaling back the—the growth factor, so that the copies would grow more like children, and less like tumors. 

I was next. My earliest memory is of looking out at Divayth through the rosy tint of the nutrient bath—looking at that dear craggy face with its white beard—and being struck with the strangest sense that I was looking in a mirror. It is a vivid memory, a fragment out of time. Of course I looked nothing like him at the time, or like any living mer. There are drawings. I had been a sort of larva with translucent skin and a pair of eyespots, like a maggot with tiny arms and hands and fingers, floating in a jar. On the glass itself he had written the single rune that became my name, my designation, my variable: Uupse. 

Rohve, Sigme, and Tahve were my generation-sisters. I do not really remember them, although they would have been in jars on the same shelf. They died soon after being taken from their jars. What he had done, scaling back our growth—he had gone too far and all four of us had very soft, flimsy tissue to start, like marshmerrow cream. Rohve came to pieces when he took her from the jar, dissolving in his hands into a sort of blood jelly. Sigme fared little better, though he tried to be careful. 

Only Tahve and I survived the transition, and only because in desperation he levitated us out still wrapped in a bubble of warm fluid, and drew it off little by little, over nearly a day. I do have a brief, broken memory of Tahve, or at least I think so—at least I remember another body beside me, grey and red, floating in a cradle of spell-warmed air. We were both wounded, and she died of her wounds. I survived. 

As you might imagine, I was very weak as a child, and he feared—they all feared—that I would not live. I slept at first in my levitation cradle, and when my flesh grew tough enough to bear the weight of my own body, he transferred me to a special padded cradle of fine, soft silk. When he showed me the cradle—yes, of course he kept it, the way you might keep your daughter’s baby teeth in a jar—I was fascinated by the old blood that still stained it. 

He fed me with his own hands, not trusting any other to do it, and I grew stronger by the day. When I learned to move about, I was transferred to a soft, padded room and cared for by my sisters. I did not understand this at the time; I only understood that my progenitor, my creator, my father, had become distracted and no longer spent the bulk of his time on me. But I grew to love Alfe and Beyte and Delte; to look up to them and admire them. I wanted to be like them, to be of service to Divayth, and always in his presence. 

When I was seven or eight years old I was deemed strong enough to cope with the hard edges of the real world, and allowed out of my padded cell. Immediately I became his helper in his workshop, washing equipment and preparing reagents and such things. It was what he had designed me to do, and I was as successful as he could have wished. I spent every hour I was permitted in his workshop, or in the Corprusarium. The latter fascinated me as well, and it seemed he never wearied of answering my questions. He was pleased to have someone to teach, someone who shared his interests. 

Yes, yes, I see your face, I know what you want me to speak of.  _ That  _ started before I even left my cell, if you can believe it. It was horribly boring in there, even with books and toys to entertain me. All day I looked forward to his visits, and when he opened the door I would run to him and leap into his arms, sometimes so eagerly that I found dark bruises on myself the next day. He liked to kiss and cuddle me, and I absorbed whatever he taught me, as I absorbed Alfe’s wit and Beyte’s singing and Delte’s color-coded filing system. But he did not… did not fully consummate our relationship, as it were, until I was of age. At least of age according to his criteria, which are entirely biological. 

I had my first menstrual cycle when I was seventeen. At first I did not know what it was; I thought I had simply injured myself somehow. I was quite used to unexpected injuries, although I hadn’t had one in some time. As usual, I simply went to him and told him about it. He gave me a sharp look and had me disrobe and lie back on his bench so that he could inspect me properly. I shut my eyes as he probed with his cold metal instruments. When he rose he allowed me to sit up and put on my clothing. I was frightened, but his face was serene. 

He said, “Nothing to worry about, Uupse. But keep an eye on it.” 

“Sir?” I said. 

“This one is not like the others.” He showed me a little of the blood he had swabbed up. It was dark and brownish and had a sour smell; there were specks of tissue in it, as if I were rotting from the inside. I was afraid, but he said, “It is a menstrual cycle, no more. A discarded attempt at reproduction.” 

I knew about these from books, and was somewhat soothed. For one thing it meant the bleeding would be temporary, and that it would occur only a few times before I became a full adult and my body learned to hold back its efforts until needed. I said, “But what if it is not a menstrual cycle?” 

“Then there is something very wrong. But if I am right, the flow of blood will grow a little heavier for perhaps two or three days, and then it will stop. As I say, keep close track. If it is…” 

He trailed off, but there was something in his expression that frightened me. Intellectually I understood what he wanted, but he had never looked at me that way before, with that  _ longing.  _ For days after that I dreamed of being vivisected and eaten, over and over. Of course it’s ridiculous in retrospect. If he had really wanted to eat a young girl he could have just kidnapped or bought one, instead of going to the trouble of growing one. 

My cycle progressed as he said, and I dutifully marked down the color and smell, and used an easy protein precipitation technique and a small fluid sample to estimate the total volume. When I presented him with my notes he smiled at me and kissed my mouth. 

“At last,” was what he said. 

My sisters made a celebration of it, and feted me with shein and candied yams and steamed buns flavored with bittergreen, which are still my favorite. Beyte swung my hands and hugged me, and Delte showed me the meticulous records she had kept of her own first cycle, cross-referenced to her diet and the phases of the two moons. Alfe said there would be no living with me, and that I would be even more spoiled than I had been already, but she smiled. 

Oh? Oh, yes. No, I haven’t fallen asleep. Could I have some more water? I’m a little nervous. I should not be, I know. There is nothing to be nervous of, nor ashamed. And yet… Still, I suppose there is nothing for it but to go on. Thank you. Yes, I’m all right. 

It was perhaps two weeks later that Beyte came to me and told me what they had planned. Or was it Divayth himself? No, it was definitely Beyte. I remember that I was washing the resin beads Divayth uses when he synthesizes genetic material. It’s not a difficult process, but the solvent we use causes infertility in men, so he always had me do it, and put a sign up on the door… I’m sorry, this is not interesting, is it? 

Anyway. She told me there was to be a special surprise celebration in my honor, a celebration of my maturing flesh, and she winked, the way she does when she thinks she is being subtle. I washed my hands, and she led me to Divayth’s bedroom, on the upper level. I had been there before, of course, but my heart was pattering in my chest. 

Alfe and Delte were already waiting there, lying together in the bed. It’s an unusually wide bed, you know, we don’t all  _ sleep  _ there but it has to be able to hold five. When I came in Alfe was leaning over Delte and kissing her neck, but Delte pushed Alfe away and sat up, smiling at me. 

“You found her!” she said to Beyte. Her hair had all tumbled down around her shoulders, and when the blanket fell down I could see her breasts. Her nipples are very dark, like granules of coal-tar. All of ours are, even Divayth’s. I couldn’t stop looking at them, and when I did I felt my own nipples prick up, even though it was not cold in the room. 

Now, there was nothing particularly unusual about seeing my sisters naked, or even in bed with one another, and of course I had cuddled with Divayth, as I have already said. All of that was in the normal run of things. We are not a prudish family. But I also had my dreams. Not the cannibalism dreams; sexual dreams, the sort that woke me in the night and made my body feel hot and swollen, as if it belonged to someone else. I used to worry that I was coming down with corprus when that happened. That was what I felt like when I saw her breasts, even though they had never affected me that way before. 

I couldn’t breathe or move. I was wearing my usual work clothing, just a simple long-sleeved shirt and pants that could be quickly taken off if I spilled something dangerous on myself. Beyte reached around me and tugged the hem of my shirt out of my waistband, and like a silly fool I jerked away and batted at her hands. I didn’t… This sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t want her to see the response I was having. To Delte and Alfe. But she took hold of me again and turned me around to face her, and this time I held still as she unbuttoned my shirt and helped me step out of my pants, and pushed me toward the bed, naked as the day I was levitated out of that jar. 

Delte held up the edge of the blanket as I stumbled near, and I climbed in beside them. Delte shifted at first to let me in, and then climbed over me so that I was between the two of them. Her bottom half was just as bare as the top, and when she slid over me the touch of her skin made me tingle, all over. It was very warm in that bed, with Delte on my left and Alfe on my right, and the door to the room at my feet when I craned my neck to look. Alfe rolled onto her side and both of them looked at me for a moment, just looked. Alfe put her hand on my shoulder. 

“You’re shaking,” she said. Her voice was gentle and concerned, not mocking, and I think that frightened me more than anything. Alfe is always, always sarcastic.  _ Sarcasm  _ means  _ cutting flesh,  _ you know; I truly expected her to flay me with her tongue. But she said, “Uupse. You’re frightened?” 

I stammered something that must have been incomprehensible. 

“Let her alone, Alfe,” Delte said. “Uupse, sweetie. He wants to have you tonight, now that you are an adult. That’s all. He’ll be along as soon as he is finished in the Corprusarium. There’s nothing to be frightened of, it’s wonderful.” 

Well, who else would  _ he  _ have been? We always spoke this way, I knew who she meant. 

“But if I do something wrong,” I started to say, and then flinched when Alfe laughed. Delte patted my shoulder again, and Alfe quieted herself right away. Behind Alfe, Beyte came into the bed, and I felt the mattress shift beneath us. 

“You won’t,” Alfe said. 

Beyte leaned over her and said, “That’s what we’re here for, to help you. Alfe, if you won’t hurry up and kiss her, I will.” 

Alfe stuck her tongue out at Beyte, and then kissed my mouth. 

At first it was only my mouth she kissed. Her lips were softer than Divayth’s, and a little bit fuller, and she slipped her tongue between my lips almost right away, instead of Divayth’s usual slow progression. I did know how to kiss, and I shut my eyes and kissed back as well as I could, and felt her hand slide from my shoulder down to my right breast, where she cupped it firmly but otherwise did not rub or caress. Her hand was warm, and oddly comforting. 

At the same time I felt Delte cup my left breast and kiss my cheek, and my neck, and the point of my shoulder. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder and fell across my face; it smelled of the fire-flower perfume she favored. Her hand crept down from my breast, as did Alfe’s, and when the two of them bumped together somewhere on my belly Alfe laughed and lifted up her head. 

“Crowded in here,” she said. I was about to speak, but Delte bit the side of my neck so that I squeaked instead. Then she took my hand and put it on her own breast, and kissed my mouth, and I gave up trying to protest. 

It was hard to tell what was happening, whose arm or leg or breast or hair was whose. Beyte climbed over Alfe, or around her, or something, and pushed the blankets back and straddled my midsection, which made it hard to look at much of anything except the undersides of her breasts, or focus on anything but the faint prickle of her pubic hair, and the heat between her legs. She put her hands on my breasts and massaged them, slowly. Her hands were very warm, and heat seemed to flow from them through my body to gather somewhere between my hip bones like a bed of embers. It was a diffuse feeling at first, but then I felt Alfe’s hand slide right between my legs and the feeling grew abruptly tight and sharp, and I bit Delte’s mouth without even realizing it. 

“Ow,” Delte said, and Alfe laughed. She had one of her hands on my thigh—I thought it was hers, anyway—and the other moved slowly across my vulva, just a gentle pressure. For a while I just laid there and enjoyed the experience, touching Delte’s breast when I remembered, and I put my other hand on Beyte’s hip as well, trying to give something back. It was becoming clear that nothing was really expected of me, and as I was beginning to relax I felt Alfe shift again and pull the blankets all the way down, to the foot of the bed, letting in a rush of cold air. 

“What’s going on?” I said, and then—oh, and then—Alfe put her hands around my thighs and I felt something soft and wet and warm slide up my vulva, and brush over something exquisitely sensitive. If Beyte’s hands on my breasts were embers, this was fire, magma. 

I squeaked and tried to clamp my thighs together, but of course I only hit Alfe in the head. Alfe said, “Stop that,” directly into my skin. It tickled and I squeaked and squirmed again, but she just pushed my legs apart again before continuing to lick and kiss that tiny spot, her tongue swirling over and around it. 

Had I said Alfe had a sharp tongue? It did not feel at all sharp at that moment. I swallowed and shut my eyes tightly, and closed my hands into fists on the sheet beneath me, trying not to moan or scream, but little whimpers escaped me anyway. Tears wet my eyelashes and crept down my temples—not  _ unhappy  _ tears, you understand, but I was overwhelmed by sensation. 

“Uupse,” Beyte murmured, leaning close. “Are you all right?” 

“It’s so much,” I whimpered. 

“Do you need to stop?” 

I shook my head, emphatically. It was too much—and yet at the same time, it was not enough. “It’s good,” I managed, and then clamped my mouth shut, horrified that I had said as much. Beyte leaned over me, her forehead still furrowed with worry. 

Behind her, the door opened. 

I couldn’t see who it was at first, but Beyte half-turned and then said, “Oh!” and when she climbed off I saw Divayth standing in the doorway, surveying us. Surveying  _ me, _ laid out in front of him with my legs spread wide and Alfe between them. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so naked, before or since. 

He was wearing his flannel nightshirt, for some reason. It was one I had given him the year before, for a joke. It had narrow red and white vertical stripes. In my heightened state I felt as if I could see each stitch, each thread in sharp relief. His hair was still neatly tied back in a high tail, except for a few strands that had fallen down by his left ear. In the lamplight his skin looked almost grey-green, like the water in the harbor of Sadrith Mora. 

I sat up, dislodging Alfe, and came up onto my knees. My foot hit her in the head when I sat up, and she swore at me under her breath and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 

“You started without me,” Divayth said, sounding aggrieved. 

“You’re late,” Alfe said. “Go away, old man. We don’t need you.” 

“Is that so?” he said. “Well. Perhaps you think so. But do your sisters agree? Uupse?” 

I couldn’t speak, but I drank in the sight of him, and the sound of his voice. Delte’s breasts and Beyte’s hands and Alfe’s unexpectedly gentle mouth had woken something terrible in me, something that was hungry and cried out to be filled. 

I said, “Please,” and I saw his throat work as he swallowed. 

He stepped forward, and shut the door behind him, and threw the bolt, and my heartbeat quickened. No one would disturb us—no visitor, no guard, no late-night thief arriving to plunder the dungeons. I had his full and undivided attention. 

He pulled his nightshirt off over his head, and the tie out of his hair, and ran his hands through his hair, massaging his scalp so that his white hair fell loose all around his shoulders. Divayth has freckles on his shoulders, did you know that? Little ones. Not many people know that. Not many people know how many scars he has, either, and not just from fighting. My favorite is the row of small silver circles on the outside of his right thigh, where he took the flesh to make me, and my sisters… But I looked  _ down,  _ past his freckled shoulders and his scarred chest and his belly, down at the curling white hairs at his groin and his cock, already beginning to grow, and I wanted him, wanted his skin against mine. 

Beyte and Delte pulled away, and Alfe scooted right off the bed as he came toward me. He climbed directly over the foot of the bed and bore me straight back, and down, covering my body with his own. I wriggled my legs out from between his and wrapped them around his waist, and he settled atop me with a sigh. His warm weight pressed me to the bed and I put my arms around his neck and tried to kiss his mouth, although he turned slightly and I kissed his cheek instead. I was so happy I wanted to cry. 

Delte’s hand was still tangled in my hair, and Divayth removed it, very gently, and smiled at her. He shifted upward, resting his forearms beside my head, and his cock nudged the inside of my thigh, velvety and still only half-hard. Wherever he touched me, I thought I could feel sparks running through me. I tried to open my legs wider without releasing my hold on him, tried to tilt my hips forward. 

“Please,” I said again. He was so close, it was like looking into the sun. Or rather like having the sun look into you, into your heart. His eyes were half-lidded, and the lamplight gleamed on them so that they seemed almost to glow, like a glass of wine with the light behind it. 

“They’ve done too much work on you,” he murmured. “I need to catch up.” He pushed himself up on one elbow and surveyed me. Then, as if he had come to a decision, he lowered his mouth to my breast. 

I couldn’t breathe. It felt entirely different from what Beyte had done with her hands. His beard tickled the tender underside of my breasts as he sucked first on one nipple then on the other, drawing them up into the wet heat of his mouth. I felt someone’s hands prying my legs from his waist—Alfe’s, I think, they were hard and narrow—and then Divayth shifted his weight off me and canted his hips to one side. Beyte was kneeling at his side, her hand on his hip. She lowered her head and took his cock in her hand, and then put her mouth on it. Her chin brushed the inner curve of my hip and I shivered. 

For a moment Divayth rested his hand in her hair, closing his eyes. Behind him Alfe moaned as Delte did something I couldn’t see, and I felt the bed tremble beneath all of us. Then Divayth returned his attention to me. 

He put his hand between my spread legs and rubbed hard with his palm. His hand was much broader than Alfe’s, and somewhat dry, and a little callused. With his fingertips he searched out that sensitive little nub and manipulated it, until I had to bite the back of my hand and turn away to keep from crying out. He tore my hand away from my mouth and took hold of my chin, forcing me to look at him. 

“Don’t hide from me,” he said. “If you want to hide I can leave, and you can finish this by yourself.” 

I faltered under his gaze, and he let go of my chin. “I’m sorry,” I said. 

He kissed my mouth again, hard, and at the same time caressed me again. I would not have been surprised if he had actually cast a small shock spell; that was how intense it was. I did cry out then, though the sound was muffled by his mouth. He said, “Better,” and did it again. 

It was a sort of agony. I was already so keyed up, so  _ ready,  _ and he tormented me as if he knew exactly what my responses would be. Over and over, his hands and mouth brought me trembling to the edge of an abyss, and then he would murmur, “No, not yet,” and take his hands away. 

I was shameless. I had been shy of touching my sisters, but with Divayth I was on firmer ground, and I did my best to make him lose his control, using my limited skills ruthlessly. I scraped his back with my nails, gently, as I knew he liked, and I kissed his ears and the soft spot of skin behind his ears, and the hollow of his throat, and some of what I tried was successful. I remember most especially that he gasped when I bit the side of his neck, and his hips jerked and Beyte made a horrible undignified gagging sound. 

Bit by bit, he took away my fear and replaced it with animal desire. I wanted his touch, his tongue, wanted him to rut against me. I wanted his cock inside me, and not just his fingers. More than anything I wanted  _ him, _ almost to  _ be  _ him, to take him inside me and wrap my body around his and be complete. 

Finally he stopped. I could feel his thighs trembling against mine. 

“Beyte,” he murmured. “Beyte. Enough.” 

Beyte lifted her head. Her entire chin shone with her own saliva. Divayth put his hand beneath her chin and she rose up onto her hands and knees to kiss his mouth, just above me. Her hair brushed across my face. Then Divayth let go of her, and settled himself comfortably between my legs. I think Beyte went to join Alfe and Delte but I was no longer really paying attention. Divayth was looking at me, and I wanted to reach through his body and pull out his heart and crawl inside it. 

Divayth took his cock in hand and set it against me. Its mushroom tip nudged the yielding flesh of my vulva, warm and a little springy. I moaned, and he pressed forward. For a moment it caught, the angle was wrong—and then my flesh gave way, and his cock slipped inside, hard and heavy, stretching me out, filling me up. It was like nothing I had ever felt, and I trembled beneath him. 

He was looking directly into my eyes, and his expression—how can I describe it? Hard, angled shadows fell across his face, and his mouth was wet and open as he breathed. He tucked his arm around my head, so that the top of my head was cupped in the hollow of his elbow, and pressed my face to his shoulder. “Your legs,” he murmured. Uncomprehending, I locked them around his thighs, pressing my feet to the insides of his knees, and he drew in a breath and then said, “Oh, just like that. That’s perfect.” 

He closed his hand in my hair, pulled out swiftly, and then thrust back inside, hard and deep. 

I cried out and without thinking clenched around him, like a fist, trying to pull him in. He surged against me and I surged in response, and we wavered, out of phase for a moment before catching and building a rhythm. Between our bellies and beneath my breasts and in the tangle of my pubic hair the sweat collected, slick as the fluid in which I was born, churning like the waters of Oblivion. The emptiness between my hips sharpened to a fierce ache as he moved inside me, bringing me again to the edge of the abyss, closer and higher and closer yet—

—and then the tightness loosened, all at once, and unraveled itself into ribbons of pleasure that slithered through my limbs like water snakes. I let out another choking cry, my toes curling and my legs coming up, my knees slipping along Divayth’s hips as I convulsed around him. He acknowledged it by tightening his hand on my hair, but he didn’t stop. He kept going, kept plumbing my body, until the pleasure became so intense it slid sideways into pain and I sobbed and clawed at him, unable to think. 

“I’m close,” he warned, between breaths. “Be ready. Be— _ oh—” _ He closed his eyes, and his entire frame jerked. “Oh, oh, oh.” 

I clung to him, like a limpet clinging to a rock, and then the universe cracked itself like an egg and turned upside down, and I felt the strangest sensation, as if I were falling through warm fluid, falling upward and into him, experiencing what he experienced as if we had become one body, one soul, one cell, one flower opening itself to the sun, one golden moment of never having been separated at all, a moment of glorious, convulsive, shuddering immortality. 

Slowly I became aware of the limits of my own body again, and my own soul, and I opened my eyes, which I had not realized I had closed. He was stretched on top of me, breathing hard. I couldn’t quite draw a full breath, but didn’t mind. Tiny aftershocks twitched through me, but my limbs were heavy and loose with contentment, and my mind still rang with the echo of that strange transcendent bliss. 

“What happened?” I said, finally. My voice was surprisingly hoarse, a shadow of its former self. 

Divayth opened his eyes and raised his head to look at me. “An illusion,” he said. 

“But  _ how?”  _

He laughed, and put his head back down, denting the pillow. “Inquisitive Uupse,” he said, tiredly. “I suppose you can’t enjoy it until you know.” 

“Explain and then we’ll do it again,” I said. Privately I was shocked at myself. I did not give him orders. Alfe did sometimes, but I never did. 

“None of the others did this,” he muttered. 

“Gamme would have,” Alfe said, behind him. 

That sobered all of us. Divayth levered himself up onto his forearms and rolled off to lie alongside me, so that I was between him and my sisters. I took a deep breath, gratefully, and he touched my hair. 

“I adore you, questions and all,” he said. “You and your sisters are nearly everything that I like in myself. Even when you get on my nerves.” 

I was pleased, but I knew he was stalling, and he knew I knew. 

“It has to do with gametes,” he said, finally. 

“Because they fuse together?” I said, and watched the smile break across his face, creasing the skin around his eyes with delight. “Half and half, that’s so elegant. But aren’t I pregnant then?” 

“It’s only a symbol,” he said, with a dismissive gesture. “Our blood and bones are the same, the universe doesn’t know the difference. I could teach you some of the theory, if you like. I’ve been discussing it with Yagrum Bagarn…” 

Alfe and Delte both made a noise of disgust. “Do you have to talk about him at a time like this?” Alfe said, and Divayth laughed. 

“Fair enough,” he said, mildly. “Later, my dear?” 

“Later,” I promised, and he smiled at me. 

And we did study later, and I did understand, and that was the first of many times we had together, and continue to have, him and me and my sisters, in all the combinations you care to imagine. I am sorry not to go on; the theory is very interesting. But I have described what I was told to describe, in language as plain as I can make it, and now I suppose you will go and publish it in that rag of yours, for people to gossip over. 

I have probably done it all wrong, including all that about Gamme and the others. But if he wanted something else he should have chosen a different daughter to tell the story. Beyte would have been ideal, or Delte. Delte would have told you about the ropes and the whips, I imagine your readers would like that. And Alfe could have told you about the steam-powered vibrator, I never saw it. Too late now. 

No, I don’t want your money; what use do you think Divayth Fyr has for the sort of money you can offer? Just remember the conditions: it must be printed  _ exactly  _ as I have said it, word for word, and you are not to print the responses of your readers. He will be reading, and he does not wish to be bothered by the idle prating of the ignorant. Perhaps when they have accomplished a quarter what he has, he may be inclined to listen. 

Until then all but the saints may hold their tongues. 


End file.
